Luke Shaw has been preemptively shortlisted for the 2019 Ballon d’Or in response to José Mourinho’s plans to dispose of the 22-year-old.

With the Manchester United left-back set to become the latest young star to be ditched by Mourinho, expectations for his future career have soared.

In order to save precious seconds of 2019 filling out the shortlist, Fifa and France Football have agreed to just pop his name down now and see if they don’t regret it later.

A spokesperson said: “If we’d just done the same for Mohamed Salah and Kevin De Bruyne, we could have saved ourselves a good ten seconds jotting down this year’s nominations.

“But the turbo boost effects on a young player of getting sold by Mourinho were yet to become fully apparent. Now we can see it’s pretty much a given that Luke will become a footballing nonpareil over the course of the next year.

“It’s a bold step alright, but it should irritate the hell out of José so it’s totally worth it.”

They added: “I’ll refrain from making any quips about the weight of expectation exceeding even Luke’s own considerable mass.